The Klamath people lived in the area around the Upper Klamath Lake (E-ukshi - “Lake”) and the Klamath, Williamson (Kóke - “River”), Wood River (E-ukalksini Kóke), and Sprague (Plaikni Kóke - “River Uphill”) rivers. They subsisted primarily on fish and gathered roots and seeds. While there was knowledge of their immediate neighbors, apparently the Klamath were unaware of the existence of the Pacific Ocean. Gatschet has described this position as leaving the Klamath living in a "protracted isolation" from outside cultures.[1]
North of their tribal territory lived the Molala (Kuikni maklaks), in the northeast and east in the desert-like plains were various Northern Paiute bands (Shá'ttumi, collective term for Northern Paiute, Bannock and Northern Shoshone) - among them the Goyatöka Band ("Crayfish Eaters"), direct south their Modoc kin (Mo'dokni maklaks - "Southern People, i.e. Tule Lake People") with whom they shared the Modoc Plateau, in the southwest were living Shasta peoples (S[h]asti maklaks) and the Klamath River further downstream the Karuk and Yurok (both: Skatchpalikni - "People along the Scott River"), in the west and northwest were the Latgawa ("Upland Takelma") (according to Spier: Walumskni - "Enemy"[lower-alpha 1]) and Takelma/Dagelma ("Lowland/River Takelma") (more likely both were called: Wálamsknitumi, Wálamskni maklaks - “Rogue River People”). Beyond the Cascade Range (Yámakisham Yaina - “mountains of the Northerners”) in the Rogue River Valley (Wálamsh) lived the "Rogue "River" Athabascan (Wálamsknitumi, Wálamskni maklaks - “Rogue River People”) and further south along the Pit River (Moatuashamkshini/Móatni Kóke - "River of the Southern Dwellers") lived the Achomawi and Atsugewi (both called: Móatuash maklaks - "Southern Dweller", or "Southern People").
The Klamath were known to raid neighboring tribes, such as the Achomawi on the Pit River, and occasionally to take prisoners as slaves. They traded with the Wasco-Wishram at The Dalles. However, scholars such as Alfred L. Kroeber and Leslie Spier consider these slaving raids by the Klamath to begin only with the acquisition of the horse.[2][3]
These natives made southern Oregon their home for long enough to witness the eruption of Mount Mazama. It was a legendary volcanic mountain who is the creator of Crater Lake (giˑw), now considered to be a beautiful natural formation.
Contact
In 1826, Peter Skene Ogden, an explorer for the Hudson's Bay Company, first encountered the Klamath people, and he was trading with them by 1829. The United States frontiersmanKit Carson admired their arrows, which were reported to be able to shoot through a house.
Treaty with the United States
The Klamaths, Modocs, and the Yahooskin (Yahuskin) Band of Northern Paiute (in Paiute known as: Goyatöka - "Crayfish eaters"), which was erroneously called Upper Sprague River Snakes believed to be a Band of Snake Indians, the collective name given to the Northern Paiute, Bannock, and Shoshone Native American tribes,[4] signed a treaty with the United States in 1864, establishing the Klamath Reservation to the northeast of Upper Klamath Lake. This area was largely part of the traditional territory controlled by the ă′ukuckni Klamath band.[5] The treaty required the tribes to cede the land in the Klamath Basin, bounded on the north by the 44th parallel, to the United States. In return, the United States was to make a lump sum payment of $35,000, and annual payments totalling $80,000 over 15 years, as well as providing infrastructure and staff for the reservation. The treaty provided that, if the Indians drank or stored intoxicating liquor on the reservation, the payments could be withheld; the United States could also locate additional tribes on the reservation in the future. The tribes requested Lindsay Applegate as the agent to represent the United States to them. The Indian agent estimated the total population of the three tribes at about 2,000 when the treaty was signed.
Since termination of recognition of their tribal sovereignty in 1954 (with federal payments not disbursed until 1961), the Klamath and neighboring tribes have reorganized their government and revived tribal identity. The Klamath, along with the Modoc and Yahooskin, have formed the federally recognized Klamath Tribes confederation. Their tribal government is based in Chiloquin, Oregon.
Traditionally there were several cultural subdivisions among the Klamath, based on the location of their residency within the Klamath Basin. Despite this, the five recognized "tribelets" (the Klamath Tribes count six) mutually considered each other the same ethnic group, about 1,200 people in total.[6] Like many Indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest, the Klamath lived a semi-sedentary life. Winter settlements were in permanent locations that were reoccupied annually. Construction of the earth-lodges would begin in Autumn, with materials salvaged from abandoned, dilapidated buildings made in previous years. Leslie Spier has detailed some of the winter settlement patterns for Klamath as follows:
The towns are not isolated, compact groups of houses, but stretch along the banks for half a mile or more. In fact, the settlements on Williamson river below the Sprague river junction form a practically continuous string of houses for five or six miles, the house pits being, in many spots, crowded close together. Informants insisted that many of these were occupied at the same time. When we consider that these earth-lodges may have housed several families, there is strong suggestion of a considerable population.[7]
Ǎ’ukckni („Klamath Marsh People“ or „Klamath Marsh-Williamson River People“)
P'laikni (“Sprague River Valley People” or “Upland Klamath”, lit. “highland dwellers”)
Kowa’cdikni („Agency Lake/Marsh Lake People“)
Du’kwakni („[Lower] Williamson River People“)
Gu’mbǒtkni („Pelican Bay People“)
Iu’laloηkni („Klamath Falls (Link River) People“)
Marriage
Marriage was a unique practice for the Klamath, compared to neighboring cultures found in the borderlands of modern Oregon, California, Nevada and Idaho. For example, unlike the Hupa, Karok, and Yurok, the Klamath didn't hold formal talks between families for a bride price. Especially notable was the cultural norm that allowed wives to leave husbands, as they were "in no sense chattel ... and certainly cannot be disposed of as a possession."[8]
Ethnobotany
The Klamath use Apocynum cannabinum as a fiber and eat the roots of Lomatium canbyi.[9] They use the rootstocks of Sagittaria cuneata as food.[10] They use Carex, weaving the leaves into mats, using the juice of the pith as a beverage, eating the fresh stems for food and using the tuberous base of the stem for food.[11]
Dentalium shells were common among the Klamath prior to colonization. Compared to other native cultures, dentalium didn't hold as much financial use among the Klamath. However, longer shells were generally held to be more valuable. Nonetheless these shells were esteemed primarily for as jewelry and personal adornment.[12] Septum piercings were commonly given to younger members of Klamath families to allow inserting dentalium. Some individuals wouldn't however use any shells in their septum.[13] Spier gives the following account for their usage:
The septum of the nose is pierced and the ear lobes, the latter twice or even more frequently. Both sexes insert dentalium shells horizontally through the septum ... Ear pendants are a group of four dentalia hung in a bunch by their tips.[14]
The use of dentalium in septum piercings, in addition to other means of ornamentation, was common among the Wasco-Wishram as well.[15]
Classifications
The Klamath people are grouped with the Plateau Indians—the peoples who originally lived on the Columbia River Plateau. They were most closely linked with the Modoc people.
The Klamath spoke one dialect of the Klamath–Modoc language - the northern or "fi-ukshikni" dialect, the other - the "southern" dialect being spoken by the Modoc people, who lived south of the Klamath. Once thought to be a language isolate, Klamath–Modoc is now considered a member of the Plateau Penutian language family.[16]
Both the Klamath and the Modoc called themselves maqlaqs, maqlags or Maklaks meaning "people". When they wanted to distinguish between themselves they added knii ("people from/of"), the Klamath were called ?ewksiknii, "people of the [Klamath] Lake", and the Modoc were called moowatdal'knii, "people of the south".
Boyd, Robert (1996), People of the Dalles: The Indians of Wascopam Mission, Lincoln, NE: The University of Nebraska Press
Coville, Frederick V. (1897), "Notes on the Plants used by the Klamath Indians of Oregon", Contributions from the United States National Herbarium, 5 (2), Washington, D.C.: Department of Botany: 87–110, JSTOR480624
Gatschet, Albert Samuel (1890), The Klamath Indians of Southwestern Oregon, Contributions to North American Ethnology. Vol. 2, Part I, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office
Kroeber, Alfred L. (1925), Handbook of the Indians of California, United States. Bureau of American Ethonology. Bulletin,78, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office
Spier, Leslie (1930), Kroeber, Alfred L.; Lowie, Robert H. (eds.), Klamath Ethnography(PDF), Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnography, vol.30, Berkeley: University of California Press, retrieved September 10, 2024
Wheeler-Voegelin, Erminie (1955), "The Northern Paiute of Central Oregon: A Chapter in Treaty-Making Part 1", Ethnohistory, 2 (2), Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 95–132, doi:10.2307/480624, JSTOR480624
Further reading
Annual report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1865: Reports of Agents in Oregon Washington: United States Office of Indian Affairs, 1865.
Klamath County is one of the 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 census, the population was 69,413. The county seat is Klamath Falls. The county was named for the Klamath, the tribe of Native Americans living in the area at the time the first European explorers entered the region. Klamath County comprises the Klamath Falls, OR Micropolitan Statistical Area.
The Northern Paiute people are a Numic people that has traditionally lived in the Great Basin region of the United States in what is now eastern California, western Nevada, and southeast Oregon. The Northern Paiute pre-contact lifestyle was well adapted to the harsh desert environment in which they lived. Each tribe or band occupied a specific territory, generally centered on a lake or wetland that supplied fish and waterfowl. Communal hunt drives, which often involved neighboring bands, would take rabbits and pronghorn from surrounding areas. Individuals and families appear to have moved freely among the bands.
The Modoc War, or the Modoc Campaign, was an armed conflict between the Native American Modoc people and the United States Army in northeastern California and southeastern Oregon from 1872 to 1873. Eadweard Muybridge photographed the early part of the US Army's campaign.
The Modoc are an Indigenous American people who historically lived in the area which is now northeastern California and central Southern Oregon. Currently, they include two federally recognized tribes, the Klamath Tribes in Oregon and the Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma, now known as the Modoc Nation.
The Klamath River flows 257 miles (414 km) through Oregon and northern California in the United States, emptying into the Pacific Ocean. By average discharge, the Klamath is the second largest river in California after the Sacramento River. Its nearly 16,000-square-mile (41,000 km2) watershed stretches from the high desert of south-central Oregon to the temperate rainforest of the North Coast. Unlike most rivers, the Klamath begins in a desert region and flows through the rugged Cascade Range and Klamath Mountains before reaching the ocean; National Geographic magazine has called the Klamath "a river upside down".
Achomawi are the northerly nine bands of the Pit River tribe of Palaihnihan Native Americans who live in what is now northeastern California in the United States. These 5 autonomous bands of the Pit River Indians historically spoke slightly different dialects of one common language, and the other two bands spoke dialects of a related language, called Atsugewi. The name "Achomawi" means river people and properly applies to the band which historically inhabited the Fall River Valley and the Pit River from the south end of Big Valley Mountains, westerly to Pit River Falls. The nine bands of Achumawi lived on both sides of the Pit River from its origin at Goose Lake to Montgomery Creek, and the two bands of Atsugewi lived south of the Pit River on creeks tributary to it in the Hat Creek valley and Dixie Valley.
The Atsugewi are Native Americans residing in northeastern California, United States. Their traditional lands are near Mount Shasta, specifically the Pit River drainage on Burney, Hat, and Dixie Valley or Horse Creeks. They are closely related to the Achomawi and consisted of two groups. The Atsugé traditionally are from the Hat Creek area, and the Apwaruge are from the Dixie Valley. They lived to the south of the Achomawi.
Penutian is a proposed grouping of language families that includes many Native American languages of western North America, predominantly spoken at one time in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California. The existence of a Penutian stock or phylum has been the subject of debate among specialists. Even the unity of some of its component families has been disputed. Some of the problems in the comparative study of languages within the phylum are the result of their early extinction and limited documentation.
The Takelma are a Native American people who originally lived in the Rogue Valley of interior southwestern Oregon.
The Molala are a Native American people of Oregon that originally resided in the Western Cascades. There are few recorded sources about the Molala, the majority being unpublished manuscripts. This assortment includes the works of Albert S. Gatschet, Franz Boas, Leo J. Frachtenberg, Philip Drucker, Melville Jacobs, and Leslie Spier.
The Shastan peoples are a group of linguistically related Indigenous peoples from the Klamath Mountains. They traditionally inhabited portions of several regional waterways, including the Klamath, Salmon, Sacramento and McCloud rivers. Shastan lands presently form portions of the Siskiyou, Klamath and Jackson counties. Scholars have generally divided the Shastan peoples into four languages, although arguments in favor of more or fewer existing have been made. Speakers of Shasta proper-Kahosadi, Konomihu, Okwanuchu, and Tlohomtah’hoi "New River" Shasta resided in settlements typically near a water source. Their villages often had only either one or two families. Larger villages had more families and additional buildings used by the community.
Curley Headed Doctor was the spiritual leader for the Modoc tribe, notably during the Modoc War.
Bear Creek is the name of a stream located entirely within Jackson County, Oregon. The stream drains approximately 400 square miles (1,000 km2) of the Rogue Valley and discharges an annual average of 114 cubic feet per second (3.2 m3/s) into the Rogue River. It begins near Emigrant Lake and travels 28.8 miles (46.3 km) through the municipalities of Ashland, Talent, Phoenix, Medford, and Central Point.
The Klamath Tribes, formerly the Klamath Indian Tribe of Oregon, are a federally recognized Native American Nation consisting of three Native American tribes who traditionally inhabited Southern Oregon and Northern California in the United States: the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin. The tribal government is based in Chiloquin, Oregon.
Modoc traditional narratives include myths, legends, tales, and oral histories preserved by the Modoc and Klamath people of northern California and southern Oregon.
Klamath, also Klamath–Modoc and historically Lutuamian, is a Native American language spoken around Klamath Lake in what is now southern Oregon and northern California. It is the traditional language of the Klamath and Modoc peoples, each of whom spoke a dialect of the language. By 1998, only one native speaker remained, and by 2003, this last fluent Klamath speaker who was living in Chiloquin, Oregon, was 92 years old. As of 2006 there were no fluent native speakers of either the Klamath or Modoc dialects; however, as of 2019, revitalization efforts are underway with the goal of creating new speakers.
Latgawa are Native American people who lived in the Rogue Valley of interior southwest Oregon. In their own language "Latgawa" /latʰka:wàʔ/ means "those living in the uplands," though they were also known as the Walumskni by the neighboring Klamath tribe.
The Oregon Superintendent of Indian Affairs was an official position of the U.S. state of Oregon, and previously of the Oregon Territory, that existed from 1848 to 1873.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife v. Klamath Indian Tribe, 473 U.S. 753 (1985), was a case appealed to the US Supreme Court by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The Supreme Court reversed the previous decisions in the District Court and the Court of Appeals stating that the exclusive right to hunt, fish, and gather roots, berries, and seeds on the lands reserved to the Klamath Tribe by the 1864 Treaty was not intended to survive as a special right to be free of state regulation in the ceded lands that were outside the reservation after the 1901 Agreement.
The Native American peoples of Oregon are the set of Indigenous peoples who have inhabited or who still inhabit the area delineated in today's state of Oregon in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. While the state of Oregon currently maintains relations with nine federally recognized tribal groups, the state was previously home to a much larger number of autonomous tribal groups, which today either no longer exist or have been absorbed into these larger confederated entities. Six of the nine tribes gained federal recognition in the late 20th century, after undergoing the termination and restoration of their treaty rights starting in the 1950s.
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